On November 8, 2022, the novel The Pirate's Wife: The Remarkable True Story of Sarah Kidd by Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos was published, providing further insight into the history of Captain Kidd and his faithful, loving wife Sarah Kidd. Little was known about Sarah Kidd prior, but historian and journalist Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos did a fantastic job of surfacing newly discovered sources and providing a bigger scope of the events that unfolded in New York when Captain Kidd was wanted for piracy.
Sarah Kidd was widowed by twenty-one and operating within the strictures of polite society in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New York, Sarah secretly aided and abetted her husband, fighting off his accusers alongside him. This novel reconstructs her life and places it within the city, a “utopia” for pirates in the Golden Age of Piracy.
Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos states in this novel multiple times that Kidd committed piracy in some circumstances while also providing evidence to suggest that the captures he made were in his right as a privateer under his commission with the King. These sections in The Pirate's Wife where it claims Kidd committed piracy either have no sited sources or the sources that were provided did not give concreate evidence that Kidd actually committed piracy himself - in these sited cases, it was the crew of the Adventure Galley acting on their own. What we do know for certain is Kidd was not honest to Bellamont about all of the events that took place on his voyage. That does not prove that Kidd was guilty of piracy, and he should be allowed to remain innocent until proven guilty.
The book The Pirate's Wife: The Remarkable True Story of Sarah Kidd, a wonderful work that provides a fresh perspective and new sources for the history of Captain Kidd, can be purchased today.
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